Loved by a Duke (The Heart of a Duke #4)(67)

With two winks, he touched the brim of his hat, startling another sharp bark of laughter from her lips.

“Please remember yourself, Daisy. It is impolite to laugh.”

She returned his greeting with an eager wave that caused her mother to cry out. “Come, Mother. I rather think it is preferable to go through life laughing than with a stern frown.”

Her mother either failed to hear or appreciate the reproach there. “Oh, Daisy, do come away from that window.”

Daisy returned her gaze to the cobblestones below, locating Auric just as he stepped through the open doorway. She released the fabric and it fluttered back into place. “Surely, a bride is allowed some excitement on her wedding day?” Improper thoughts no true lady should dare have, wandered down the path of her wedding night. Nervousness warred with a scandalous eagerness that burned her cheeks.

“There is never a place for such unrestrained excitement in a polite, respectable lady’s life,” her mother replied.

Her mother certainly believed as much. Daisy gave silent thanks that the proper marchioness couldn’t glean the true musings traipsing through Daisy’s head even now.

Her lips pulled at the corners.



Silence. It filled the Blue Parlor—thick, uncomfortable, and tense. But for the rustle of Daisy’s blue satin gown as she occasionally shifted back and forth on her feet and breaths of the handful of guests present, the room was otherwise silent. As it had been since the butler had shown Auric inside a short while ago.

The lady’s guardians were quiet. The marchioness was beaming. And Daisy was, well bloody hell, he couldn’t tell precisely what the lady was. The smiling vixen waving boldly from her place at the window had become this subdued stranger the moment he’d entered the parlor.

Did she sense that she had bound herself to the veriest bastard? A vile monster who, in his silence, would take choice from her hands? The muscles of his stomach clenched. I love you… God help him for being selfish and self-serving, but he wanted her even with the lies between them. Odd, he should have lived the better part of their lives failing to see her as anyone but Daisy, his small girl of the flowers; an obligation he had a responsibility to. Now, she was a woman he ached to possess in every and any way—body, mind, and soul. She deserved more than a marriage constructed from lies. He thrust aside the thick fingers of guilt clutching at him. He would be good to her. He would protect her and make her smile. In time he would tell her and then, perhaps, she could forgive him, even as he could never forgive himself.

“You owe the lady at least some words. It is, after all, your wedding day,” the Viscount Wessex, friend, witness, and sharer of this sad collection of peoples’ dark past, whispered at his side.

He glared at him. Except, Daisy chose that inopportune moment to glance up from her position at the floor-length window. She frowned at him in return and then shifted her attention to the streets below.

“The very least you can do is stop glowering at the poor lady,” Wessex persisted.

Heart pounding loudly in his ears, Auric took her in, framed as she was by the white damask curtain. God help him. “I cannot do this,” he whispered. Not with the lies between them. He took a step toward her.

Wessex shot out a hand, gripping Auric by the forearm, halting his movement. He looked blankly down at the hard, gloved fingers. “You’ve moved well past that,” he gritted out the corner of his mouth, his hushed tone barely reached Auric’s ears. “If you do not do this, you will ruin her.”

Not if Daisy herself was to call it off at this moment. The scandal would, of course, attract gossip, but her reputation would not be devastated. She’d find a gentleman worthy of her. A man Auric would hate with every fiber of his being until the moment he drew his last breath. But then, when you loved someone, you put them first. He started, staring at the graceful curve of her neck, the simple butterfly combs he’d gifted her six days? A lifetime ago? How could he have failed to realize until this moment, when he’d lose her, that she owned him in every way and that his heart beat for her and only her.

“Do not.” There was something faintly pleading in Wessex’s entreaty. “Do not for the both of you.”

He shrugged him off and started forward. Just then, a glint of silver caught his eye. Auric turned, taking in the wan, oft indisposed, Marchioness of Roxbury. Today, however, an uncharacteristic smile lined the woman’s lips. Yet for that smile, the same sadness that clung to her hovered about the woman’s narrow frame and even filled this room, on her daughter’s wedding day. Auric pulled his gaze away and looked to Daisy. She rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet the way she’d done as a child, as though excitement thrummed through her being and sought an outlet. A woman of her spirit would ultimately be smothered here. No, he could not allow her to remain the lone, forgotten child of the late Lord Roxbury. Daisy deserved more. Even as he believed he would never be the more she deserved, he could not go through life knowing she was the lonely daughter of an oft-depressed mother.

The vicar cleared his throat and the decision was made. “Shall we proceed?”

It was a decision Auric would likely go to hell for, if he’d not already earned a spot in the devil’s flaming lair seven years ago.

Daisy hovered at the window and for a too-long moment his heart hung suspended with the fear that she’d come to her senses and did not intend to move forward with her intention to wed him. Then, she crossed over and came to a stop beside him. The other guests took their places in the various seats scattered about the room. Auric fixed his attention on the vicar, who turned the pages in his Book of Common Prayer, all the while Auric’s skin burned with Daisy’s stare fixed on his person.